Moms on welfare need flexibility; children need
cognitive development

By Amy CowlesHomewood

There is no such thing as the perfect child-care setting.
But in the quest to create the ideal place for children of
working mothers on welfare, borrowing the best elements from
existing models might be a good place to start, say
researchers from Johns Hopkins and Boston College.

The conclusion is the result of the latest research
conducted in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio through
Welfare, Children and Families: A Three-City Study. Started
in 1998 by researchers at five universities, its purpose is
to examine the consequences of welfare reform for the
well-being of children and families. Andrew Cherlin, chair
of the Hopkins Sociology
Department, is lead investigator.

Andrew Cherlin

"Our [latest] study suggests that the best child-care
options for low-income working mothers would combine the
advantages of child-care centers, such as early learning of
language and of math concepts, with the flexibility and the
greater trust that mothers find in unregulated care,"
Cherlin says. "The best care would be both stimulating to
children and accessible and satisfying to mothers."

The policy brief "Child Care in the Era of Welfare
Reform: Quality, Choices and Preferences" says that while
mothers prefer the flexibility of unregulated home
child-care environments, child-care centers best meet the
developmental needs of their preschool children.

"Our observations rated child-care centers as providing
the highest quality care for children, followed by regulated
in-home care, with unregulated in-home care ranking last,"
says Rebekah Levine Coley, the lead author of the report and
an assistant professor in the Applied Developmental and
Educational Psychology Department in the Lynch School of
Education at Boston College. "But mothers reported the exact
opposite: They were most satisfied with unregulated in-home
child care, typically provided by relatives."

More than half the children in the study were cared for
in private home settings, where care is often provided by a
relative. Mothers say they like the accessibility of in-home
care, where providers are more likely to accommodate the
mother's work schedule. And with an average
provider-to-child ratio of one-to-one, mothers relying on
unregulated child care in homes feel they have more open
lines of communication with the people caring for their
children.

But convenience may harm children in the long run,
researchers say. Only 12 percent of the unregulated homes in
the study received acceptable ratings for developmental
quality, based on child development research standards. The
remaining 88 percent received "minimal" or "inadequate"
developmental quality ratings.

In sharp contrast, 78 percent of the licensed
child-care centers in the study earned acceptable marks
according to the same set of standards. Based on those
rankings and on other observational data, the study suggests
that formal child-care centers provide the most
developmentally supportive settings for children as well as
the highest levels of safety and the greatest feelings of
warmth.

"We know that warm, stimulating and safe environments
are centrally important for helping low-income children
prepare for school," Coley says, "but we cannot ignore the
needs of mothers for child care that is accessible,
affordable, and complies with their beliefs and standards."

Combining the best qualities of both in-home care and
child-care centers could bridge the gaps for low-income
families, Cherlin says.

Other findings in "Child Care in the Era of Welfare
Reform: Quality, Choices and Preferences" include:

Mothers who
recently left the welfare rolls had greater difficulty
finding acceptable child care than mothers receiving public
assistance.

Asked what type
of child care they would prefer if they had complete freedom
to choose without financial constraints, 40 percent of the
mothers surveyed said they'd choose center-based care.
Thirty-eight percent said they would choose unregulated
home-based care. Six percent said they'd use regulated home
day care, and 17 percent said they would rather stay home
and take care of their children themselves.